Lindsey Graham’s Bipartisan Vision To Keep America In the Middle East Forever
The vote before the Senate on Wednesday was simple: Should the United States give Israel another $20 billion in weapons, largely paid for by the American taxpayer? (The Senate voted overwhelmingly to continue the arms transfer.) But Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) had something quite different in mind. He took the opportunity to promote the “historic opportunity” to “change the region and change the world” by permanently committing U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia.
That vision is bipartisan, at least as far as Graham is concerned. The Republican senator bragged about his work with the Biden administration over the past two years “to try and build out the Abraham Accords,” the agreements between Israel and several Arab states.
“What I would like to do with President [Joe] Biden before he leaves office is to work with President [Donald] Trump, the incoming president, and President Biden, the outgoing president, to find a solution,” Graham said. “Can we lock down a normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel that protects Saudi Arabia—a defense agreement with Saudi Arabia so they’re in our column and they have an antidote to Iranian aggression?”
Saudi Arabia has been demanding a defense pact modeled on the U.S. treaties with Japan and South Korea, which compel American troops to fight and die in those countries’ defense. And the Biden administration has been eager to provide that guarantee. According to investigative journalist Bob Woodward’s recent book, Graham told Biden in private that he wanted to work together “to convince Democrats to vote to go to war for Saudi Arabia.”
Graham took Wednesday’s debate on Israel as an opportunity to sell a U.S.-Saudi military alliance as a way to lighten Israel’s burden. “Somebody other than Israel has to come in and take over Gaza and reform the West Bank to give the Palestinians a better life. It will not be the United States. We can’t do that. It’s certainly not going to be Israel. Well, who will it be? It would be the Arab world,” Graham said.
However, he immediately made it clear that he also considered propping up the Saudi government a goal in its own right. “The
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